I can't speak much for bots, I can count my time here in days still. 
However like any social platform, if you want to build you have to get out of your box and mingle with people. 
While I can see the cons of an auto system, especially the set it and forget it. 
I don't think it will take away from new users trying to get themselves seen. 
As with anything it takes time, and detracts people from posting trash. 

I am tiny still have have loads more time before I become relevant, but that doesn't stop me from bring my voice in. It just comes with the incentive to get out there, browse SteemIt myself and meet people. 

Just my 2 bits...

I am new and just figuring out bots. Will be following this discussion.

Your upvotes are almost worth a dime now! 
I hear ya on the lottery bit. I now know the exact dollar worth of the attention gotten from starting a budget diet, and the general worthlessness of sharing parts of my life. That time of day difference is very, very real right now. Though as we get more international users I think it will mostly vanish.

Well, the last fee months where I have been away from SteemIt for issues I could not have controlled the bots did make me about 1+ SteemPower for curation a week. So I agree bots can be good when one needs to walk away, but as you mention they are also bad in that I was gone a few months so not around actually reading anything.
I find that since I do get paid for making a post I feel I will try harder because I want to get paid more than $1 for simply making a post. Yes I have seen bad posts make more than mine which can be discouraging as a new user, but time does pay off. Was keeping track of my post with payout and found simply by frequent posting I was starting to create better posts and I was also getting better payout when I did make the posts.

So bots or no bots, they are a tool, and they do help. I really do not see there be a way to avoid using them. Unless I was able to make enough money simply here alone to survive I don't think I could make it without a bot to help on voting!

I am a newbie, and personally, with the info I have now, I am against the bots.  However, that may change if I would understand how to set up a bot and would begin to make money from it.  Still, the purist in me, and maybe a bit of naivety, believes the foundation of what Steemit was based on, humans rewarding humans for their work, would win out in the end, and bots will only defeat the whole meaning of the site.
Instead of the best, most informative, and creative writers being rewarded, it would be the best computer programmers.  Nothing personal, computer programmers, but you can make money elsewhere easier than writers and distributors of thoughts, ideas, and concepts.
Again, just the random, rambling thoughts of a newbie!

Maybe there should be a captcha for upvotes. That way, bots won't work.

No more bots!!!

If this platform is going to be successful in any way shape or form bots are going to need to reign supreme. The attention economy will be underpinned with bots to ensure the best content thrives. Those bots will have to be optimized to align with the values of the network. Otherwise the bots will become worthless quickly. 

Bots will be how users ensure their favorite creators continue making their content.

Ideally, I'd prefer if people upvoted content that they actually read and liked. That seems like the most fair and honest way to award people for their time, effort, talent and ideas. However, the bots have been a part of this site much longer than I have, and obviously others are ok with using them, so I accept that it is what it is.

when you say that you 'use them as a curating tool' you're actually not being truthful. How can a bot curate? So go ahead..tell me you go back and read what your auto-bots 'curated'....

yeah right.

bot's are vote harvesters...they degrade the Steemit experience and they ENCOURAGE spam...which in turn encourages Flaggin...which in turn encourages people to leave stemmit.

@whatageek can you teach me how to set up a curating bot?

These are all very good points and concerns. I might make a talking video about this to share my thoughts on the importance of curation.

I've written at length on the subject, and I'd like to share a couple of points on the debate.

Bots are here to stay because allowing them is part of the security features of the system, i.e. the steem blockchain does not use the usual anti-bot measures because most of them are not applicable and the others would restrict usage in a way that could lead to censorship (real censorship, not flagging 😂). I discussed it in a post [here](https://steemit.com/bots/@personz/potential-solutions-to-stop-restrict-or-disincentivize-bots-and-alternatives-for-better-bots-bots-act-3), where I also suggest some makeshift "solutions" (if you think bots are a problem).

Voting bots are basically [advantage gamblers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advantage_gambling), legally gaming the system. Some people see this a problem but another perspective is the one you have cited, as a passive income, or as interest on your Steem investment in the language of the Steem whitepaper.

Not all bots are created equally and this point cannot be stressed enough. I think the majority of bots instances running are simply following accounts and blindly voting for everything. This is not smart, it's incredibly dumb. (not in a value judgement way, but in a rating of intelligence). There are some really smart ones out there but the best are closed source. Bit of a plug here, but I lead the [Steem FOSSbot](https://github.com/steem-fossbot/) team (it's pretty much just me) and our work focuses on putting smarter stuff in the hands of everyone with open source software.

In sum, I'm for them, but only would support _smart_ bots.